Overcoming the negativity trap

I've been reading a fascinating novel called "Generosity: An Enhancement". It's about a woman ostensibly afflicted with hyperthymia — an excess of happiness. The book poses the question: What if there were a happiness gene and it could, through genetic engineering, lead to treatments that make us all forever positive and filled with an abiding happiness?

It's superbly written and provides a deep social satire of the issues of temperament, social acceptance, human generosity and the scientific commercialization of our genome.

Halfway through the book, one of the characters describes a thought experiment on loss aversion:

"Imagine you are in a deserted parking lot and a twenty dollar bill blows right in front of you. There's no one in sight you can return it to." "How do you feel?"

"Now imagine some time later, you are in a store. You approach the cash register with a purchase, reach inside your pocket for the twenty, and find it's missing. You accidentally threw it away when disposing of some crumpled tissues." "How do you feel now?"

The character Russell feels the difference.

"The freebie was fun; the lost panics him... The bad is crazily out of proportion to the good, and it's the same twenty bucks."

Our brain bias towards negativity

Unfortunately, we have a Brain bias towards negativity. Wikipedia describes it as: "A psychological phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative rather than positive experiences or other kinds of information."

This negativity bias shows up in many aspects of our society and our lives.

I've blogged before about how we have more negative words than positive words in the English vocabulary and therefore in our ability to make distinctions and discriminations in our world. It's easier to express yourself negatively than positively.

Negative things are more attention-getting than good or positive things. They affect the Reticular Activating System more strongly. That's why the News is filled with FUDGE (Fear, Uncertainty, Disaster, Greed & Envy). You rarely see news or movies based on positivity, love, kindness and joy. Happiness does NOT make interesting news.

Research on negativity bias has also shown that:

• If a person has a good experience and a bad experience close together, they will feel worse than neutral. This is true even if they would independently judge the two experiences to be of similar magnitude.
• Negative information in the simple form of negation has greater impact and creates more attention than similar positive information in the form of affirmation.
• When put in an environment with a variety of information to pay attention to, people will immediately notice the threats instead of the opportunities or the signals of safety.
• Negativity is 'sticky' - our minds naturally and quite spontaneously tend to fixate on the negative and overlook the positive, especially when under stress.
• Loss aversion is a related process to negativity bias and involves the innate tendency to be more impacted by the negative experience of loss than by the positive experience of gain - we fear loss more than we appreciate gain.

An evolved predisposition


You see, the brain has evolved with a greater sensitivity to negative, threatening or unpleasant news. The bias is so automatic that it can be detected at the earliest stage of the brain's information processing. As an example, studies done by Dr. John Cacioppo at Ohio State University, showed people pictures known to arouse positive feelings (a Ferrari, or a pizza), negative feelings (a mutilated face or dead cat) and those known to produce neutral feelings (a plate, a hair dryer). During this process, researchers recorded electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex indicating the magnitude of information processing taking place. The results showed definitively that the brain reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative. There is a greater surge and spread in electrical activity throughout the brain. In this way our attitudes are more heavily influenced by bad news than good.

Need to track for and overcome the negativity trap

Knowing that your brain has a bias towards negativity puts you back in control. You have a choice. Millions of years of evolution may have wired in a predisposition towards negativity, but learning and behaviour can change the structure and wiring of your cortex. You can learn new responses. You can build unconscious competencies that change your evolved patterns. You can overcome the negativity trap!

Pattern interrupt and focus on positivity

The key to overcoming the negativity bias is in the following steps:

Knowledge >> Awareness >> Pattern interrupt negativity >> Replace with positivity

Through repeated practice of this strategy you will build new parts in your multi-mind and can overcome and transcend negativity bias. Using this process, you will have stepped out of the trap and created patterns that continue to enhance your life.

Amplifying the positive

You'll notice that over the course of the last year this blog has introduced you to many, many tools for focusing on and amplifying positivity in your life, behaviour and mind. We've explored the power of positive words. We've encouraged skills and a passion for delight, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, savoring positivity, gratitude and appreciation, amongst others. All life enhancing skills. You might like to revisit some of those blog posts to refresh your mind about them.

Start today to notice whenever you are celebrating or amplifying the negative and immediately replace that emoting with a more positive, optimistic and fun loving attitude.

Positivity is life enhancing. Build it as a key focus into every day, all your relationships and every life enhancing moment.


great wishes,
Grant


Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive

Daily Dose of Positivity: Mental Supplements for Better Health

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want

Freedom from vs Freedom to

This week's blog post continues our exploration of freedom.

An important distinction

In exploring freedom it's useful to note the distinction between 'freedom from' versus 'freedom to'.

"freedom from anger, fear, want, hunger, pain, disease, stress, depression, debt, poverty, necessity, violence, war, advertising, addiction, etc."

"freedom to live, love, think, believe, talk, share, travel, buy, sell, act, create, share etc."

Freedom from

Freedom from oppression in its many forms is vital for living a great life. Whether it's freedom from addiction, from coercion, from co-dependency or from grasping after desire, the freedom to do as you choose and to create your own destiny relies on throwing off the shackles that bind and limit your freedom to think, feel and act.

Freedom to

Freedom to make up your own mind. Freedom to choose what you want. Freedom to live in whatever life enhancing way you desire. This is what you must fight for in your life.

A balancing act

Of course, as Sully pointed out in his thought provoking blog interview on Freedom, we all choose to give up certain social freedoms in order to gain other freedoms in exchange: "...we all give up some freedom/choice to gain security. Laws are just such a social contract (e.g. I'll give up my freedom to rob you for the security that you won't rob me)."  There is always a trade and a balance.

Maintain your freedom

But for you to maintain as much 'freedom to' you need to ensure you have and continuously keep your 'freedom from'. Watch this carefully.

If you allow yourself to become addicted to any substance, thing or behaviour you have given away your freedom. This is a trade that is not balanced. It's a one way street to misery and is ultimately life denying.

If you give away choice or lock yourself into double-binds, then you have taken away more of your precious freedom.

So I encourage you to watch for and guard assiduously your 'freedom from' and in that way you'll keep your choices open and maximise your flexibility - your 'freedom to'.

It's a subtle distinction this difference between freedom from and to. But it's a life enhancingly crucial one.

"He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide."

Salvador de Madariaga

wishing you life enhancing choices,
Grant


Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life

Beyond Freedom & Dignity - B. F. Skinner

Food for thought: Delightful Repasts

 
I have to say... I love food! All sorts of food! Delicious food!

I think that creating and eating delicious food is life enhancing! Great food delights and pampers the senses. It stimulates, communicates and assuages our more primitive heart-brains and gut-brains. Taste links to and drives so many of our pleasure circuits. Delicious food is comforting, uplifting, joyful and sometimes even orgasmic (especially if it involves chocolate :) Yes, used intelligently and appropriately, food is truly life enhancing.

I'm also magnificently blessed by living with a wonderful and beautiful person who shares my passion for cooking and savoring fine food. It's true, I'm spoiled. Anyone who has enjoyed a delicious Fiona meal or sampled some of her culinary delights, will whole-heartedly agree that she is a wondrous creator of delectable comestibles.

Combine some wondrous food with a great wine and you've got the makings of an evening of life enhancing bliss!

So it will come as no surprise, given my focus and passion for great recipes and delicious food, that for today's blog post I've served up a wonderful interview with a person who shares a passion for both food, cooking and writing. Jean, is a freelance writer who writes about food, etiquette and entertaining for numerous publications. I was introduced to her wonderful blog Delightful Repast and instantly felt a kindred spirit. On her blog you'll find recipes that warm the body and soul, recipes of the sort to become a family tradition. She has a passion for good food, and for making every meal a life enhancing "delightful repast".

To set the scene (or table perhaps) for the interview with Jean, I'd like to share with you a couple of snippets from the FAQ on her blog. They'll give you a feel for why I was keen to ask her to share her thoughts, ideas and passion with you here.

What is the origin of the name of your blog?

My husband is very polite and humorous, often simultaneously, and has said to me after nearly every dinner I've ever made for him, "Thank you for the delightful repast." How could I name my food blog anything else!

I chose the subtitle A Tradition of Good Food because I was born into a tradition of good food, the product of a father who, having grown up on a monotonous diet during the Depression, spared no expense when it came to food and a mother who was an inspired cook with "perfect pitch," able to taste any sort of dish and recreate it.

How would you describe your food?

The short answer would be: comfort food with flair. I love classic comfort food prepared with care and the finest ingredients. Beautiful presentation is important. It adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of a meal. I use as many local, seasonal, organic ingredients--as natural and minimally processed as possible--as I can. My recipes are not the "open a can of this and a package of that" sort. And "doctoring up" a mix is not my idea of baking. (Not that there's anything wrong with that; I just happen to enjoy the process as much as the result.)

Life Enhancing Interview with Jean @ The Delightful Repast

Ok, so with the base ingredients nicely covered, I invite you now to sit back, relax and enjoy the following taste treat: Food for thought - A Life Enhancing Interview with Jean @ The Delightful Repast

Q. What do you think is life enhancing about delightful repasts? Or about creating delightful repasts?

Food is so much more than just fuel for the body. It delights all five senses and provides emotional, as well as physical, comfort. I have memories from the age of two that indicate I have always viewed the kitchen as the heart of the home. My childhood was rather chaotic, but I choose to hold onto the good memories, most of which happen to center around food. I think if my family of origin could manage to gather around the dinner table together at the same time every evening and enjoy a delightful repast, any family can!

My husband and I don't eat in front of the television, and we don't allow the telephone or anything else to interrupt our dinner. We don't use paper plates or plastic cups, and we don't use different dishes, glasses and flatware than we use for company. Everyday life, not just special occasions, IS our life. So why not make an occasion of everyday dinner?

Also, when you take a moment to be thankful for the food that is before you, it helps you really appreciate all that you have as well as life itself. And I think that quiets down the endless list of "wants" we tend to have in a materialistic society.


Q. What are the values that direct your cooking and recipe/food/ingredient selection?

Food is such a significant part of any household's budget that the choices we make in the marketplace can make a real difference. Saying "No" to pesticides, chemical additives, preservatives, food coloring, irradiation and genetically engineered foods puts our consumer power to work for a better world as well as better health for ourselves and our families.

My four main requirements for produce or other foodstuffs are that it be: 1) seasonal; 2) locally grown/produced, or at least grown/produced as close to home as possible; 3) organic, or at least as chemical-free as possible; 4) grown, harvested, produced and distributed in a socially, as well as environmentally, responsible way.

I've been vegetarian at various times in my life, and ideally I would be vegan; but that's not going to happen. So I try to eat meat less often and choose meat that has been produced under the best conditions. We need to insist on humane treatment of all animals and proper working conditions for those who work in the meat industry.

Buying only in-season produce grown as close to where we live as possible supports our local farmers. I see it also as a way of preserving the rich farmland of my county and fighting the urban tide. (Remember "pave paradise, put up a parking lot"?) It's a little  frustrating when I hear people lamenting the loss of another patch of farmland to commercial development then I see them buying the imported versions of the foods that are grown right here.

Although we have access to nearly any food at any time of year, eating with the seasons leads to more pleasure in dining--the pleasure of anticipation and change as well as the pleasure of superior quality. I prefer to skip the out-of-season imports and enjoy the anticipation of the first asparagus of spring and the first juicy apricot of summer.  

Then there's the matter of waste. Our society has never, in my lifetime, been very mindful of waste. Now, more than ever before, we need to be. From childhood on, I've always been conscious of not wasting meat, simply because I did not want that animal to have died in vain. Unfortunately, I was not always so conscious of wasting other foods. But the earth has paid a price for the production and distribution of those foods, and so to waste them is a serious matter. 

Am I perfect in all my food choices? Of course not! But I feel good about each healthful and earth-friendly choice I do make. And, for anyone who is just starting on the path, I would like them to know that it gets easier all the time. It sounds daunting, as if every grocery shopping trip would take hours and hours of careful deliberations. But, really, it becomes automatic.
 

Q. How can people make their meals and food creation more delightful and life enhancing?

Most parents think they are doing everything they can to give their children a wonderful childhood, but many are missing the mark simply by undervaluing the simple things in life. Take an average family of two adults and two children, coming home after work and school (and an excessive number of extracurricular activities), going their separate ways in a house that's larger than it needs to be, each engaging in an expensive electronic activity that isolates him from the rest of the family, each eating a different meal in a different room. Doesn't sound like the stuff of fond memories to me!

Wouldn't it be wonderful if parents and children could go to the farmers' market or farm stands together, or even tend a few tomato plants in the back yard, and prepare and enjoy dinners together? And parents can use cooking to teach their children about their heritage and to keep cultural traditions alive. I honor the memory of my grandmothers every time I cook Southern (paternal grandmother) or English (maternal grandmother) food.

Setting a nice table for family dinners is life-enhancing. Don't save the tablecloths and cloth napkins, the "good" dishes and glasses, and the candles for company. Use it all, enjoy it, let it enhance your everyday life. And don't save "manners" for company either. Turn off the phones. And, for goodness sake, no texting at the table! Whether it's with adults or children, guests or family, I enforce "electronic etiquette" in my home!

Q. What is your most life enhancing recipe?

That is something that changes constantly. On a day I'm missing a loved one who has died, the most life-enhancing recipe I could prepare would be one that is in some way connected to that loved one. On a day I find someone in need of comfort, the most life-enhancing recipe I could prepare would be whatever is that person's favorite comfort food. But if I had to choose one food category to describe as most life-enhancing, that would be bread. Making bread makes any day better! [Check out Jean's delicious bread recipe here]


Q. Who are your role models or exemplars for a) Delightful and Life Enhancing repast creators, and b) for living an enhanced life?
My mother was an inspired cook with what I can only think to call "perfect pitch." She had the ability to taste any sort of dish and recreate it. I inherited her passion for cooking and for reading and began cooking with her when I was about four. We would often do both, cooking and reading, at the same time. Her version of even the simplest thing was vastly superior to anyone else's. I didn't know why that was until I got a bit older and recognized that she never impatiently slapped anything together (not even a tuna sandwich for a child), but always prepared things with care. She would take that extra moment to make a subtle adjustment to the seasoning that would make all the difference. And I also learned presentation from her. Which, I suppose, is why you will never find a commercial container, such as a bottle or carton, on my table!

Both my grandmothers, and my great grandmother, were good cooks as well. Cooking things that they cooked, I'm sort of communing with these women all the time in my kitchen. Also, my dear friend Dorothy, who died 11 years ago, frequently comes to mind in the kitchen. And I can't peel a potato without recalling my wonderful mother-in-law saying "Hon, you're taking half the potato along with the peel." And I am constantly making new food memories with my living friends.

I feel fortunate that I didn't have to find my role models on television! Don't get me wrong. I love watching cooking shows (just the ones on PBS--I don't have cable or satellite). But people are celebrity-mad these days, and I think that's sad. Of course, it's good, I suppose, that someone can be worshiped for their cooking as well as for their acting or athletic ability.

That being said, Julia Child was one of my early influences. When she started in television, my mother and I enjoyed watching her show together. I was very young then, but I had been cooking since I was four! My mother would be so pleased to know that I actually met Julia not long before she gave up the Cambridge house and chatted with her several times during her final years at various small foodie events in California. I had always intended to invite her over for afternoon tea but never got around to it. Lesson learned: never procrastinate when you're dealing with someone in her 90's!

There is a lot of food snobbery now. I talk to people all the time who are in a cycle of competitive cookery with their friends. They rarely have anyone in for dinner because they feel they would have to muster up an enormous amount of energy since expectations are so high in their circle. I say, it's time to get real. We're all busy, stressed and tired; we need friendship and comfort, not poached lamb brains on a bed of hummingbird tongues with a rose-scented trockenbeerenauslese reduction (and that's just the first course!).


Q. What are the most life enhancing devices you own and use, either in the kitchen, or in your life?

I love using dishes and kitchen equipment that belonged to my mother or grandmothers or other people I love. I continue to use a particular type of rolling pin (that Julia Child denounced as being too small, and perhaps it is) simply because it's the model my grandmother used. And my teapots and tea kettles--because I drink tea several times a day and it's part of my heritage. 


Check out Jean's blog

Well I trust you enjoyed that delightful repast of ideas. There are some life enhancing distinctions in what Jean has shared, and I hope today's focus on the importance of good food and delicious meals will inspire and remind you to enhance your own life with your own delightful repasts.

You might also like to wander over to Jean's blog. Her blog post this week is about her grandmother's and great grandmother's cream gravy, a Southern thing. The post tells how, as a young girl, Jean got interested in genealogy and struck up a correspondence with her 89-year-old great grandmother that she'd previously never met. Along the way, she shares some of her Grandmother's history, traveling from the South to Oklahoma in a covered wagon! The cream gravy sounds delicious, and of course, there's a link to Jean's delicious life enhancing bread recipe. Check it out: The Delightful Repast

wonderful and life enhancing wishes

Grant

Some more food for thought:

The Way to Cook - Julia Child

Sweet Serendipity: Delightful Desserts and Devilish Dishes

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

We are what we know!

In today's blog I want to introduce you to some powerful and influential thinking tools, and then link and combine them to make what I think is a profound distinction that is probably one of the most fundamental understandings for enhancing life I know.

All knowing is doing

"All doing is knowing and

all knowing is doing"

 Humberto Maturana

According to Dr. Humberto Maturana, an influential Systems Theorist, Biologist and Philosopher, all true knowing involves action. You don’t really know something until you can use it. This is the difference between knowledge and information. Facts are merely data you have available and don’t translate into true knowing and skill until you can use them. The key to wisdom and knowing involves using your knowledge to create positive change in your world.

The importance of understanding that “all knowing is doing” is in ensuring you stay out of the trap of thinking that data and information equals knowledge. Knowledge involves integrated understanding about using data in ecological ways -- about intentions, actions and consequences of the data. Knowledge is powerful, but only when it involves successful doing. The saying “with a little bit of knowledge we’re dangerous” is a reflection on the difference between facts versus an integrated mastery of knowing.

To support happiness and meaning in your life, ensure you put knowledge into action. Apply your learnings to your life and the lives of others. Make a positive difference and integrate your experiences through self-reflection and a focus on feedback and choice.

We are what we do

"We are what we do"

Robert Ornstein

Dr. Robert Ornstein, a noted Psychologist and Neuro-Scientist, makes the point in his many pivotal books, that we become what we repeatedly do. Our personalities and identities are influenced by repeated behaviour and experience. The insight from Ornstein's work and research is that we are made up of a 'multi-mind' of relatively simple and autonomous processes -- a society of mind -- that is created and influenced by our actions and experiences in the world; by what we do. Our actions modify the neural networks of our brains and create lasting 'parts'.

According to Ornstein: "We think our conscious mind, 'the self', is in control, but in fact it is a small isolated part of the mind, sometimes called into play by consciousness, most often on the sidelines. We have many minds that shift into place, and 'we' are not the same person from moment to moment, not the same 'self' at all". Our self is in large measure generated by what we do and what we learn to do. The import of this deep insight is that we need to be careful what we do, since behaviour alters and influences the mind in lasting ways. We also need to learn to communicate and negotiate with the various parts of our multi-mind in order to guide and direct our lives. I'll blog more about this in coming entries.

Now lets combine and link these thinking tools

If it's true that 'we are what we do'  and 'all doing is knowing and all knowing is doing' then it is an obvious extension that:

"We are what we know"

Read that again... 'we are what we know!'. Surely this is a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious), but let's examine this and it's import in detail, as it has deep links to the notion of Life Enhancing.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Aristotle

We are what we know!

This statement claims that our identity, our sense of self, who we 'are' is entwined and determined in large measure by what we know. Our knowledge, learning, skills and processes of 'knowing' make us who we are. Our knowledge and knowing changes the structure of our brains and the connections in our neural patterning systems.

Extreme cases such as 'wild children' - feral children who have been brought up by wild animals, or who have been locked away with no human interaction for the first several years of their lives - show how crucial the early years of learning are on the formation of the human self.

According to Wikipedia: "Feral children lack the basic social skills which are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them."

The evidence shows that wild children are never able to be fully integrated into society or be taught and socialised to become 'normal'. As we grow up, in the normal social and cognitive world of our society, we learn what and how to act and operate. We learn norms of behaviour and appropriate responses. We learn myriads of skills that form our unconscious competencies. And we learn the stories and roles that define us.

At the heart of this, what makes us human are the underlying processes of languaging and learning - the embodiment and instantiation of knowledge and knowing and how we bring this forth in the world. As the field of NLP highlights, each of us operates, not off the world itself, but off a map or model of the world - a reality tunnel, that is a deleted, generalised and distorted representation of the world.

Through the active process of 'knowing' - exploring and expanding our models of the world - we come to 'be' more, we expand our identity and the scope of operation of our consciousness. We get more life and are able to do more enhanced living through increased knowing.

When looked at from this perspective, it's obvious that 'we are what we know' and therefore knowing is life enhancing. The more you learn and know, the more you can be and do in the world. Knowledge really is power.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr

Ignorance is NOT bliss, Ignorance is Dangerous

Let's for a moment look at the flip side of knowing -- ignorance, self-deception and stupidity. It might seem obvious, but ignorance and stupidity are dangerous. They can kill you. At the very least, they severely impact your success and happiness.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

Ignorance is NOT bliss! Ignorance is risky and dangerous. Ignorance can kill you! Lack of knowledge, stupidity and deception of yourself and others are all life denying and serve to diminish meaning in your life.

Some of the dangers of ignorance are:

• You can’t prepare
• You can’t see what’s coming
• It limits your choices and power
• Amplifies consequences
• Leads to more mistakes and greater costs

While most people would agree with this, nevertheless, the majority of people are largely ignorant of the most important things and processes in their life. They don’t know how their mind, brain and body works. They don’t know how they unconsciously generate their own reality and happiness. They don’t know the enemies to their success and happiness. They can’t even articulate their values and core beliefs, let alone improve and refine them for greater success in their life.

Such ignorance means they end up living average and unhappy lives. They make stupid mistakes that cost them peace of mind. They bounce from failure to failure in their relationships, finances, careers and health.

The outcome of this blog

This blog and the skills you’ll gain from following and reading it are designed to combat that ignorance. The outcome of this blog is to bring forth awareness, expansion of knowledge, and the development of new skills and mastery. Knowledge and choice provide power and control. By instilling in your unconscious mind a desire for learning and a passionate move away repulsion from ignorance and self-deception, you will make an incredible and life enhancing difference to your happiness, your life and the lives of those you care about.

Law of Requisite Knowing

Remember the ‘Law of Requisite Variety’ from previous blog entries? This is a mathematically provable theorem from Systems Theory that says that the element that has the most requisite variety or flexibility will be the controlling element of a system. This can be summarised as the thinking tool: Choice = Control. What this means is that if you want more control in life, you have to have more choice and flexibility.

There is a sister theorem to this known as the ‘Law of Requisite Knowledge’. This related theorem states that as the requisite variety and complexity increases in a system, you need more knowledge about which choices to use in order to control the system. What this is saying is that in any system, to gain more control you need both more knowledge and flexibility. You need the choice to act along with the knowledge and skill to act appropriately.

What these theories tell you is that knowledge and skill are incredibly important for control over your life and your environment. Learning and knowledge increase your power in life. Ignorance is dangerous and life denying. Wisdom and knowledge are the keys to creating life enhancing happiness, joy and meaning.

Thinking Tools – Requisite Knowing:

Knowledge + Choice = Control
 

We are what we know!

Knowledge Provides Choice and Power

In summary: To enhance your life, you need to fill yourself with a desire for knowledge, wanton curiosity about the world, and an ever increasing store of wisdom and skill. Knowledge brings freedom, choice and control. We are what we life enhancingly know!

So inspire yourself to learn and do more. Never stop learning! Read more books. Take up short courses. Become a voracious learner. Share your knowledge by teaching others. Write a blog. Research continuously for new and life enhancing knowledge and skills on the internet. Connect with other learners.

Make knowledge, learning, wisdom and understanding the highest values in your life, and they will enhance your life immeasurably.



Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

life enhancing great wishes,
Grant

Highly recommended books by Humberto Maturana:

Highly recommended books by Robert Ornstein:

Creating Empowering Beliefs

"Belief is Power. The power to create. We create our reality simply by what we agree to believe.”

Ray Dodd, The Power of Belief

As you know, Beliefs are powerful and life enhancingly important. This week's blog entry continues with our short excursion into the process and skills of believing and how to change limiting 'beliefs' into empowering ones. Remember from last week's blog that you don't 'have beliefs', instead you do the process of believing and the keys to the structure of this are submodalities.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Limiting and negative beliefs and attitudes are life denying. Many of these are unconsciously installed by our culture and the micro-culture of our family. They are often so ingrained and unquestioned that at first you may not be aware of them.

Have you ever travelled overseas to another culture and noticed how many strange and unusual customs there are? The inhabitants of that country think their customs and beliefs, their societal and cultural norms and practices, are totally sensible and normal. Yet, to your eyes they can appear crazy and non-sensical. Well, guess what, a traveller visiting your world would find your customs and beliefs equally weird and wonderful.

This is not an issue when your beliefs, values and generalisations are life enhancing and support meaning and happiness in your life. However, your beliefs and attitudes often don’t fully serve you. They are habitual patterns, mostly performed outside your conscious awareness, and can undermine your happiness and peace of mind. It’s vital that you become aware of these life denying, unnecessary self-imposed limitations and learn how to replace them with empowering alternatives.

The fields of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) have generated a lot of research on limiting and negative irrational beliefs and how they become automatic and streamlined into unconscious strategies that limit your ability to cope with life. Such negative and pessimistic thoughts and self-talk can occur when you are under stress and can cause emotional and physical reactions.

The following is a list of typical negative irrational beliefs. Take a look through and mark off those that you indulge in:

• In order to be happy, I have to be successful in whatever I undertake
• My happiness depends on my performance
• I must be accepted (liked, approved, admired) by all people at all times
• I just can’t be happy without love
• I should always be able, successful, and on top of things; if I'm not, I'm an inadequate, incompetent, hopeless failure
• Happiness is having everything I want without giving up anything!
• When things do not go the way I want and plan, it is terrible and I can't stand it!
• I am hopeless and worthless

Think about and list any negative believing you have been doing in your life or that you have used unconsciously to limit yourself. Now let's turn those around and replace them with empowering believing that's more life enhancing.

Creating Empowering Beliefs

To replace limiting and unsupportive 'beliefs' -- unsupportive believing -- you can’t simply get rid of it; your unconscious mind resists change that takes something away. Instead, you have to replace old beliefs with new ones. This is quite easily done using submodality shifts so that you zoom away the old beliefs, and zoom in the new ones.

First, generate new positive beliefs that you like the idea of having. Create a list of powerful supportive ideas and beliefs. Attitudes of success. Then use the following 'New Belief Generator' process described below to install the new beliefs in place of old negative beliefs.

Here is a list of empowering beliefs garnered from the field of Cognitive Psychology to get you started:

• I am a worthwhile person and I deserve and can easily achieve happiness
• I give myself Unconditional Self Acceptance
• Happiness is a skill that I can learn and continue improving in fun and powerful ways – I am a happiness master!
• I can wonderfully embody attitudes of happiness and success
• I am an Optimist and can easily cope with setbacks
• I see setbacks as challenges that bring new opportunities and learnings and that I can overcome
• I am a fallible human being and I forgive myself and empower myself to realise that even when I don’t get what I want I can still live a worthwhile and happy life
• There is no failure, only feedback; I learn from my mistakes and get satisfaction in overcoming obstacles
• I have High Frustration Tolerance, and know I can experience happiness as a choice, even when my preferences aren’t being met
• I am a worthwhile and happy person and I know it!

The real key to amplifying and owning a new belief is to make it bright and big and bold. Fill the belief with colour and movement, so that it engenders fantastic juicy feelings. Add music and surround-sound to the image. Really amplify and enhance it. By repeating this process a minimum of three times you’ll create a new pattern of believing in your life and your unconscious mind will continue to embody the attitude in powerful ways.

New Belief Generator

1. Picture and think about the belief you want to change. Elicit the submodalities of this image. Notice its size and position, distance and brightness. Is it coloured, is it focused, does it have a border or is it panoramic? Is it still or a movie? Write down the submodalities to use later in the strategy.
2. Think about and picture something you really don’t believe. Something you just cannot believe at all. Elicit the submodalities of this ‘Don’t believe it’ belief. Write them down.
3. Create a new, more empowering belief. You may not totally believe it yet, but decide on a belief you’d like to have. Write it up in bright bold colours. Refine it. Make it impactful in its wording and description.
4. Now, take the image of the belief you want to get rid of and zoom the image off into the distance, getting smaller and smaller, then bring it back but to the size, position and other submodalities of the ‘Don’t believe it’ image. Repeat this process 3 to 5 times. You may have to do this whole process with an ‘as if’ quality. Not everyone sees the images in their minds eye with total life-like quality, and it doesn’t seem to matter for the effectiveness of this technique. You’ll find it will work, even if you are just imagining all this happening.
5. Take the image of the new positive belief, and starting with it way in the distance, ZOOM it in to the submodalities of belief. Zoom it in powerfully, and as it comes in, closer and closer, make it bigger, brighter, bolder, more colourful and any other changes you’d like to see. Make a ZOOMING or SWOOSHING sound as you zoom it in. Repeat this process 3 to 5 times.
6. Put this whole process together. Take the old negative belief and zoom it away in the distance. Bring it zooming back in to the position and submodalities of ‘I don’t believe it’ and as quickly as possible then ZOOM in the new positive belief to the position and submodalities of total belief.
7. Lock the beliefs into position by hearing the sound of them ‘Clicking’ into place. Make a sound of a solid clicking sound in your mind or even with your voice out loud.
8. Break state by looking around the room. Repeat steps 6 and 7 from 3 to 5 times. As quickly as you can.

Up to you

Ok, it's up to you now. This blog has given you some key life enhancing ideas, beliefs and processes to use and explore. Empowering beliefs can really make an incredible life enhancing difference to your world.

Believe this! You create your reality through what you choose to believe. So choose life enhancing and empowering beliefs now.


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

empowering wishes

Grant

Using Your Brain - For a Change: NLP - Richard Bandler

Change Your Mind-And Keep the Change : Advanced NLP Submodalities Interventions

Belief Busting with NLP Unpacked (Audio CD)

Believe This!

"Belief is Power. The power to create. We create our reality simply by what we agree to believe.”

Ray Dodd, The Power of Belief

Beliefs are powerful and life enhancingly important. Beliefs, attitudes and values organise your behaviour and direct most aspects of your life and psychology. As Henry Ford said “whether you believe you can, or believe you can’t, either way you’re right”.

Another way of putting it is that ‘Achieving starts with believing!”. So it’s important to understand how beliefs work and then choose empowering and well-formed beliefs that serve you to enhance your life delightfully and wondrously.

Beliefs also largely set or constrain your freedom -- freedom to think, feel and act. So as part of our ongoing exploration of freedom, we'll take a short detour into beliefs and the underlying process of believing. Today's blog will be the first of a two part journey into believing.

So what are 'beliefs'?

Beliefs are generalisations or rules that you’ve come to accept as true about yourself and the world. Beliefs show up as stereotypes, prejudices and mindsets. A large number of your beliefs and attitudes are outside your conscious awareness. It takes work and insight to bring them to conscious consideration. There’s much research to show that large differences can exist between your espoused or conscious beliefs and your operating beliefs, your ‘beliefs-in-action’. This is the crucial difference between what you say and what you actually do.

Why aren't we taught this?

Given the importance and power of beliefs, you’d think it would be something you’d be taught at school, something that society would encourage and educate deeply about. But I bet you've never had a class called ‘Empowering Beliefs 101’. Well, let’s remedy that here and now.

Since knowledge is power, let’s learn about the process of generating and changing 'beliefs' and how the process of believing influences your unconscious mind and the minds of others. Let's examine your limiting and negative beliefs and mindsets and provide you with an NLP technique you can use to install success strategies for tracking and overcoming self-imposed limitations and replacing them with wondrous and supportive beliefs and attitudes. Sound useful and interesting?

Beliefs 101

One of the first things to understand about beliefs is they don’t actually exist! Yes, that’s right. You’ve never seen a belief. Ever. You’ve only ever seen the process or behaviour of believing. Think about it.

In NLP, the word ‘belief’ is what’s called a nominalisation. A nominalisation is a verb, or doing word, that has been turned into a noun, turned into an object or ‘thing’. Language is powerful. It’s how you do most of your thinking, your communicating. It’s how you organise, filter and make sense of your world. It’s a very powerful representational system. And like any powerful system, can be used appropriately or misused.

We typically use nominalisations to fix an ongoing process into a static object so we can get a handle on it, to talk about it. But in doing this, we distort our reality and if we’re not careful we end up mistaking our map for the territory. This distorting can lead to un-sane (not totally sane) thinking and behaviour, creating problems in our lives.

Belief as a disguised verb

Since beliefs are NOT objects, we don’t ‘have’ beliefs. Instead, we do a process of believing, and this process for most people is done outside of conscious awareness. It’s done with unconscious competence. You can’t hold a belief in your hand, or sit it on the table; you can’t go buy one from the shopping mall. So you don't have beliefs, instead you really do the process of believing (or disbelieving). And this process is a skill and has a structure.

How do we do the process of believing?

The process of believing involves forming generalisations from experience or learning them from other people, from society, family and friends. NLP has shown that when you ‘believe’ a generalisation, you unconsciously use a set of submodalities with it. Remember, submodalities are the sub-components of each of your sensory modalities. For example, visual submodalities are elements in your internal visual experience such as how close your pictures are, what size they are, where they are located in your visual field, whether they are focused, black and white, colored etc.

Let’s do a practical demonstration of this. Think of something you strongly believe in or that's an important 'belief' for you, and picture it or some representation of it in your mind’s eye. Notice the submodalities of the picture. How big is the picture, where is it in space, how far is it from you, is it coloured or black-and-white? How clear or focused is it?

Now, think of something you don’t believe and notice the submodalities of this. You’ll find some very big differences between the submodalities of what you believe and what you don’t believe.

Now just for the moment, perform this experiment. Take the image of what you believe strongly and shift the picture to have the same submodalities (size, position, distance, colours, focus etc.) of the thing you don’t believe. Now notice your subjective experience. If you’ve accurately changed the submodalities, you’ll typically find that it no longer seems quite so believable. Even though the content of the image is the same, when you picture it with different submodalities, it changes how you think and feel about the belief. It changes how you are ‘believing’ the generalisation that you are picturing. [Now make sure you put the belief back to where it belongs, back to it's original set of submodalities.]

How amazing is that! It’s so so simple to change a belief… to change ‘how’ you are believing.

What can you do with this?

Ok, so what can you do with this knowledge? Well, for a start you can begin to become aware of the submodalities of your various 'beliefs' -- how you are doing believing of the generalisations that organise your mind, perceptions and ultimately your life.

You can then consciously choose which beliefs support you and which you want to change or replace to enhance your freedom and your life.

Changing and revaluing beliefs is simple and powerful and one of the most fundamental processes you can do to enhance your life.

In next week's blog entry we'll explore typical negative and disempowering beliefs gleaned from the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and provide you with a powerful NLP technique for installing new more empowering beliefs.

So until then, start noticing 'how' you are believing. Increase your focus and awareness on the submodalities of your internal processing. Submodalities are how your unconscious mind encodes meaningfulness and are key components of the operating system of your mind. Explore them and play with them.

Believe this, you are truly free when you are able to control and master your submodalities and your processes of believing.


wishing you life enhancing believing,

smiles, Grant

Using Your Brain - For a Change: NLP - Richard Bandler

Change Your Mind-And Keep the Change : Advanced NLP Submodalities Interventions

Belief Busting with NLP Unpacked (Audio CD)

Freedom - part 2

Interview with Thomas Sullivan

Today's blog entry continues our exploration of 'Freedom' and its importance for enhancing a person's life by engendering attitudes that support it and beliefs that motivate it.

In this entry, I've interviewed Pulitzer prize nominated author Thomas 'Sully' Sullivan for his thoughts and advice about freedom.


Sully represents a wonderful exemplar of someone who has transcended the norm, is creative, generative, and lives a life of choice and empowerment, both through his actions in life and through his many and varied writings.

As noted in a recent online review of Sully's work: "His writings celebrate the individual and freedom".

 

The Phases of Harry Moon

To back this up, I recently finished reading the awesome 'The Phases of Harry Moon', the opus for which Sully received the Pulitzer nomination. In Sully's own words:

"TPOHM, is very much about rendering impossible things possible, first in inner space, and then in one's performance on the stage of life."

Whether you are reading Sully's wonderfully crafted stories, his lyrical monthly 'Sullygram' newsletter [http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/News.htm], or his daily tweets [http://twitter.com/thomassullivan], you'll often find him x-country skiing at midnight, amongst a moon-light reflected field of snow crystals, or paddling on a nearby lake, revelling in the freedom of life and nature. Sully makes the most of life, living it with passion and sharing freely with those of us who appreciate these values.


So I'll leave you now in the capable hands of Sully as he contemplates the questions I proposed about freedom, what it is and how best to create it in your own life.



Q. How do you define freedom? What is freedom for you? Why do you think its life enhancing and important?

At this point in my life I define freedom as having choices, top to bottom.  Not just choices in what I do, how I use my time, where I go, how much I spend, what I eat, what I wear, the car I drive and so forth; but choices in how I think and who I spend time with and what is worth my attention.

It is a much more nuanced state now than, say, when I was a teenager, because I am much more aware of prerogatives now.  In fact, I have become more of an existentialist in this regard -- existentialism being defined (or mis-defined) by me as an awareness of prerogatives.

Another critical aspect of freedom/choice for me is that I'm relatively free of fear and guilt.  I don't mean the fundamental kind of fears that secure our physical well-being, or the healthy guilt that gives us empathy for our species.  I mean the utterly useless and cowardly fears and guilt that drive us toward conformity, make us serve the opinions of others, and force us underground in conflict with ourselves.  Those are the enemies of freedom.

For me, freedom is almost too central to be called life enhancing as if it is a mere add-on to one's fundamental state.  It is a core need, and the tolerance for freedom and the degree of need are distinguishing differences among people.  Can one exist under total control and virtually no choice?  Yes… but that's tantamount to being on life support with no brain waves.  Freedom is the difference between living and just existing.


Q. How do you motivate yourself to stay free and overcome the limitations and expectations of society that attempt to constrain your freedom?

Wow.  Life's dynamite question.

But how to answer in less than a book?

Okay.  A little perspective 101 here: we all give up some freedom/choice to gain security.  Laws are just such a social contract (e.g. I'll give up my freedom to rob you for the security that you won't rob me).  So that's a given.  What I want to focus on here aren't the constraints on freedom that protect body or property.  Rather they have to do with one's personal control, movements, expressions and the interactions of relationships.

When we make mental, emotional or spiritual representations by our words or lifestyle choices they carry implications for the society or individuals around us that can range from threatening to affirming.  They can create bonds or alienations, friends or enemies, the beginnings or endings of love.  And, since those words and lifestyle choices are indicators of our thoughts and feelings, they are subject to interpretation and appearances.  Hence, our complex psychological interactions based on social pressure, mores, values, intimidation, manipulation, denial, façades, etc.  It is impossible to live completely free of that.  (Come up for air, Sully!)

Like I said, all of this is just context for framing an answer here.  So when you ask how I stay free, the reply is that I dodge most of the part that is social/relationship pressure and hypocrisy by daily re-connecting with what I think is honest in life.

Yeah, nature is a huge source for me -- a model for truths.  Not just crazy things I do with recreation, but what is there to be discovered, analyzed and celebrated.  Nothing helps me sort through the vanities and ulterior motives of man better than the cycles and strategies for survival in nature.  I also believe that when you stand true to your own heart/mind/soul you get the best outcomes long-term for yourself and the world around you.  You can't get that by living lies with no escape, no sanctuary.

Many people suffer lives of quiet desperation, sincerely believing that sacrificing who they are for appearances that fit their circumstances is the correct and noble thing to do.  It never honors their circumstances, and it seldom fools anyone in the long run.  And if it does the latter, well, then you’ve fooled someone, but you've also fooled yourself.  Maybe that's all right in a comfortable existence.  It's not all right for me.

The truth will set you free, as they say, and truth is very emancipating to me.  Being fooled is antithetical to that.  So I'm constantly struggling for personal honesty and greater insight.  Self-honesty is ever a work in progress, but I think I do relatively well with it.  We can do that within ourselves because we have absolute control.  Not so with the externals.  There you have virtually no control.

I have less tolerance for being fooled than most people.  I have a greater need for control of my life but I absolutely don't want to control anyone else's, because controlling someone else exposes me to being fooled.  In fact, my first reflex when trust is demanded of me is to give the other party every opportunity to betray it, because I’d rather know up front that I lost something than find out in slow motion over lost time that I never really had it.  I guess that's just an acid test -- a way to simplify and make that part of life I can't control self-regulating.

If you have to ask for something that comes from the emotional bonding part of social interaction, you will probably never truly get it, because you have just cued that person(s) to give it to you.  Demands, soft or implied, are never as satisfying as what comes to you intuitively or voluntarily.  Hey, is that an effective way to handle insecurity or what?  (Or maybe it's just a way to intensify the best things in life…shhh, just sayin’.)

Intensifying passions really is my conscious motive and has been since I was a teenager.  Another way to put it is that I place a very high priority on honesty for anything seriously close to me (but shameless dishonesty from anything that is not close to me is no problem!).  So you see how freedom depends on control for me and control, in practice, depends on keeping things simple (yeah, right), and the whole thing depends on honesty.  Honesty is sort of the nutrient.  Without it, even the potential for growth is not possible.  (Say goodbye, Sully.)

Okay.  I’ve snuck up on a conclusion.  I try to live as honestly as I can.  There.  A simple answer with a lot of complex premises!

[Note to self: if Grant Soosalu ever asks a question like this again, feign amnesia.]


Q. What advice do you have for people with regards to freedom, choice and flexibility?

Hurry up and outgrow your crippling fears and guilt.  The sooner you get there, the more fulfilling and happy your life will be (and the less unhappiness will become ingrained).  Wait too long and you may find yourself old and enslaved by the habit of negative thinking.  It takes a little courage.  But the end result will be that you'll have shed two things that controlled you -- fear and guilt -- and those, my friends, are the two biggest steps toward freedom you'll ever take.

Whether or not you let the world see your self-honesty doesn't really matter.  It's always nice if you can find relationships and environments where you can be your honest self, but if you can't, at least find a private sanctuary with no façades.  Every day.  Control, honesty, choice: all related and all essential to freedom.  Eat your heart out, if you think I'm going to say more than that.  I went long on the last question.

Q. What beliefs, attitudes and values do you live and embody that support you being free and allow you to live the wonderful life that you do?

This is going to sound like a contradiction, but the most enhancing thing I get out of freedom is the potential to sacrifice it for some cause or someone.  That is not so much altruism as it is romanticism.  I am a romantic idealist.  This is my yellow brick road to the most perfect world I can have.  Whether or not I actually get to exercise that romantic potential, doing so would be the ultimate free choice.  So the more free I am, the more I have to offer by such a sacrifice.

I've given myself heart-and-soul to causes several times in my life; I've taken a child wholly into my life twice; I've found true love once.  Those were ultimates.  But if none of those things had happened, I would still want to be a person who could have done them.  That kind of enhancement is what my life is all about.

Depth of feeling is my drug.  Such Uber-Passion kickstarts energy and imagination.  It's not for everyone; but maybe it should be.  And again, it doesn't necessarily have to be exercised in order to yield rewards.  It's having your thoughts and your feelings honed that matters.

I think most people yearn to be more honest in their thoughts, to be fearlessly open and free, but are afraid of what they might lose.  Their secret dread is that the truth will expose them as unworthy.  I see this every day in the way that people react.  And I don't mean this as something I should get credit for, but strangers open up to me almost instantly.  It’s as if I’m a non-person, some not quite human free spirit who spouts poetic fantasies and therefore doesn’t count.  I don’t know how to explain that except that maybe they see the freedom in my thoughts and want desperately to believe it will allow me to understand them without judgments or shock or disrespect.


Q. In your writing, how does the leitmotif of freedom inform your work and the characters and themes in your books and stories? And how is this reflected in your own life?

It is almost always there in my work, implicit in an abundance of free-spirited characters who search for truth, but the market is driven by mostly thing & event plots rather than idea & emotion characters.  So my thrillers tend to run on adrenaline in physical situations.

But for the reader who wants deeper internal conflicts, I like to think my characters fill the bill, particularly in that they are often struggling for control of their lives and with self-honesty -- truth seekers, if you will, reaching for the courage to live their convictions.  Control and self-honesty, as indicated in my prior answers, are the bedrock of freedom for me.

Other than my Pulitzer Prize-nommed THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON, most of the mainstream/contemporary/literary fiction I’ve written remains unpublished.  But in that languishing body of work you would find the subject of freedom/control/self-honesty to be front and center.

Perhaps my magnum opus in that regard is a book titled H.E.R.S. & H.I.M.S., which almost went directly to film after it failed to attract a publisher.  Its political incorrectness made it ultimately too risky at the time when a major Hollywood producer (who had 18 films, including one blockbuster to his credits) was interested.  The novel’s candid assessment of modern marriage would probably still offend either gender.

And another unpublished novel of mine, very much in the free-spirited theme, is DRUMMERS ON GLASS, which E. P. Dutton once purchased for hardcover.  When they demised their entire trade division temporarily, the contract got caught up between two imprints for a couple of years until I finally asked for and received a reversion of rights.  I have not gone back to market with that one because I’ve been publishing thrillers, but its unfettered and eccentric characters are very much what we’re talking about here.


PostScript: What a diabolic interview!  That man behind the curtain is Grant Soosalu, who concocts the most telling inquiries into the most intriguing (and relevant) subjects.  Thanks for that, Grant, and for having the courage and insight to chase down the elusive keys to positive living.  You enlarge the available world.

best wishes, Sully


And for those interested in reading some of Sully's books: